Born in Auckland in 1976, Rachel
Walters attended Auckland University's Elam School of Fine Arts,
graduating in 2003 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. In 2006, Walters
was awarded a Masters of Fine Arts (with First Class Honours) and
the Head of School's prize for Contemporary Maori Art. While
Walters' body of work encompasses installation, painting, mixed
media work, photography and sculpture, it is predominantly as a
sculptor that she has found her niche.
Walters' earlier works - particularly
her painting - were preoccupied with the inherent qualities of
medium and material and theoretically intent on making explicit
certain concepts surrounding the artistic act of production. This
fascination with the physicality of paint and the hands-on nature
of her artistic process saw Walters' work grow ever more
three-dimensional until it began to transcend the bounds of a
painted support (board, canvas and paper) and became more aligned
with the concepts of sculpture.
Walters' sculpture moves in a
continuum from a manipulation of found, everyday or handmade
objects (sometimes joined haphazardly in union, melted or adorned
with silicon or oozing,
brown No-More-Nails adhesive), to the casting of such
manipulations in bronze as a representation of finality, an
unchangeable end product. At either end of the spectrum, the
results are equally awkward: jarring juxtapositions that elicit an
uncomfortable marriage of objects and ideas, questioning both the
intent of the maker and the qualities of the material and
highlighting the issues of cultural and historical ownership with
which Walters so deliberately imbues her work.
Since 2002, Walters has participated in numerous group
exhibitions in Auckland, Wellington and London. Alongside notable
designers, photographers and notorious New Zealand concept artist
Billy Apple, Walters was chosen to interpret Bombay Sapphire at the
gin-maker's 2008 'Botanical Bar' - a curated exhibition in which
she created ceramic works based on the pan-cultural folklore of
herbal remedies. Since 2007, a series of miniature bronze
sculptures entitled Little Savages has inhabited the swamp
walkway of the Brick Bay sculpture trail, a quaint homage to forest
dwellers of early Maori mythology, each with the visage suitably
altered by Walters in the process of casting.